I have long been opposed to Twilight, but had never actually read it or seen the movies. I objected to it on principle. I read that teenage girls were dumping their boyfriends for “not being enough like Edward”. I also heard that Edward was an obsessive creep who stalked Bella and couldn’t decide whether he wanted to eat her or kiss her. That he tried to physically stop her from seeing people he was jealous of, and that he bossed her around constantly.

This offended me.

So I wanted to read Twilight so that when I got aerated about it, I could actually have something to go on other than sheer hearsay. I asked for it for Christmas, but with the condition that it had to be a used copy, so I didn’t end up funding the publishers. This way I could give it a chance. Much the way I gave caviar a chance, even though I hate both eggs and fish. I was right, I did hate it, but it was worth a try, right?

So I read Twilight, and I came to three conclusions:

That Twilight is even bigger literary garbage than I had expected, and consequently hilarious.

That Edward is not so bad, if you give him leeway for being undead.

That I hate Bella.

Perfect Husband said it best. On page 2 of Twilight he looked up and said, “My gawd, this reads like Mary Sue fan fiction. It’s fan fiction of itself.”

That’s totally what it is.

It’s written about as well as the standard fanfic slush you’ll find on the net. The characters are about as three-dimensional. It’s just… garbage. I wasn’t surprised by that, although I was a little baffled. Considering how successful these books were, I was expecting them to be entertaining, if vacuous. Like a Dan Brown novel. Instead I had to read it in segments, filling in with a Stephen King book when the awfulness became too much (as an aside, King once said, “Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn” and I trust Stephen King’s judgment . I like children’s fiction best, so his subject matter doesn’t usually appeal to me, but GAWDDAMN, that man can write well).

I had also read that Twilight is loosely based on Pride and Prejudice. Whoever said that is off their nut, because Twilight bears the same resemblance to Pride and Prejudice that a turd bears to a diamond. If you want a good modern re-telling of P&P, pick up a copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary. But Twilight doesn’t come anywhere close. If anything, it’s closer to Jane Eyre, and by “closer” I mean the proximity of the Earth to Pluto as compared to, say, Betelgeuse.

On the bright side, Edward didn’t piss me off nearly as much as I expected him to. I mean, he is a terrible model for a boyfriend – the man suffers from such radical mood swings that he might benefit from lithium, and he is possessive, insultingly bossy/condescending, and a creepy stalker, but actually he has a couple of redeeming features.

First of all, I feel obligated to cut him some slack because after all, he is an undead creature. But barring the wants-to-drink-your-blood issue, he seems like a decent person. For one thing, he is aware of the fact that he is a creepy, obsessive, undead monster and frequently warns Bella that she really should try to stay as far away from him as possible.

Now, I am a bit of a sucker for a Byronic hero, and Edward fits the mold so well that Meyer might as well have drawn his character directly from the Wikipedia definition (and she very well may have). The love of my literary life when I was an impressionable thirteen year old girl was Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre (for whom Stephenie Meyer named her male hero). These two Edwards could go head-to-head when it comes to passionate, obsessive love… which is extremely attractive to pubescent girls for some reason.

Edward Cullen’s love for Bella is selfless, passionate, and unreasonably unconditional. He is about as two-dimensional as you could ask for. He’s pretty much written to spec: *Insert Female Fantasy Here.* Characters like him are to women what porno women are to men – a fantasy object, not a person. That is what sells the Twilight books. It certainly isn’t Meyer’s writing ability.

So here’s what pisses me off: Unlike Jane Eyre, who is awesome, Bella deserves no such attention.

Bella is a self-centred, melodramatic, self-martyring twatwaffle.

While I can suspend my disbeliefcling to the supposition try to pretend that an extremely sexy and selfless vampire with extraordinary willpower is attending high school in small town Washington, I can’t believeI refuse to accept I find it impossible to imagine that he would choose Bella to fall in love with.

If you haven’t read Twilight, but aren’t afraid of spoilers (and I assure you, spoiling Twilight would be like trying to spoil last year’s fish heads) or if you have already suffered through this book, read on:

The whole premise of his attraction for her (besides the fact that apparently she smells DEElicious) is that she is the only human being on the planet whose mind Edward cannot read. No reason for this is ever given. He finds this intriguing and he is always trying to find out what she is thinking, with a perseverance which any warm-blooded woman would find endearing.

But let me tell you – there is nothing unique about Bella’s mind. She is the most banal, stereotypical teenager you could ever ask for. Edward speculates that Bella’s mind must run on a totally different frequency from everyone else’s.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Allow me to walk you through Bella’s mind:

The book starts with Bella starting a new school in Washington. She moans on about how she just knows she won’t fit in, because she never fit in in Phoenix. She says “I’d never fit in anywhere” and “if I couldn’t find a niche in a school with three thousand people, what were my chances here?”

Well, far be it from me to judge a girl starting school in a new, small town. I’ve been there. It sucks.

But when she actually attends school, she is immediately swarmed by a host of other teens all desperate make friends. The first is a boy whom she describes as “overly helpful” and “a chess club type” (whatever that means). He offers to take her to her next class and makes conversation with her on the way. She freezes him out with some sarcasm and then bitches to herself about how no one appreciates her sense of humour.

As various fellow students lead her to her different classes, ask her questions, eat lunch with her, and basically treat her like a celebrity (all of which is extremely unlikely – I’ve moved to a small town while in my teens. They don’t welcome outsiders), Bella isn’t pleased in the least. She doesn’t bother to remember the names of people being nice to her, or listen to them when they talk with her (“I smiled and nodded as she prattled about teachers and classes. I didn’t bother to keep up“). When another boy who she describes as “cute” is friendly to her, she decides that he is “the nicest person I’d met today”. Because the girls who ate lunch with her, or the other boys who talked to her don’t count… why?

I already disliked this girl and I was only on page 25. The more convinced Bella was that she is a special snowflake, the more insipid and mundane she became.

“Did you get to The Sentence yet?” Perfect Husband asked me. I didn’t know what he was talking about. “You will,” he promised. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

I knew it when I saw it.

“Forks was literally my personal hell on earth.”

…Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand there went my last vestiges of respect tolerance for Bella and her creator. Either Stephenie Meyer put that sentence in ironically, knowing how often teenagers misuse “literally”, or she actually thought that was a valid sentence. Either way, Bella is a banal, stuck up little idiot with painful grammar. Tiffany Aching would kick her ass.

It’s all downhill from there.

Other charming characteristics of Bella:

She falls down and faints so often that I am convinced she has some kind of medical problem. Perhaps early onset MS or some form of epilepsy?

She purposely flirts with a younger boy that she is not attracted to just to worm information about Edward out of him.

She misinterprets a lustful physical attraction for “love” (a common mistake among teenagers) and spends a lot of time sighing about how irrevocably in love she is with this guy, even though she never gives a reason other than his fabulous looks.

She lets Edward push her around, always resisting temporarily before submitting with lamb-like docility. Bella is the reason that some men think “no” secretly means “yes”.

Dear Bella,

You are a bad person, a banal mind, and (the worst accusation one can make in literature!) a boring character.

Love,

Me.

P.S. You undergo absolutely no psychic growth through the novel, which makes this the worst book I have read since Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.

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49 thoughts on “TwiBash”

I completely agree! I read all 4 books of Twilight and I also LOVED Jane Eyre when I was younger! Bella gets worse the futher you go in the books that by the time you get to the 4th book you want to throw the book across the room, but you keep forging on because you want to find out what happens in the story. Vampires could have killed Bella in the 4th book and I wouldn’t have cared in the slightest. Have fun reading!!

I don’t know how to express how much I loved loved LOVED this post. I mean, seriously – it’s stellar writing aside from reinforcing that I absolutely do not want to read it ever, for any reason.

I did try, because more than one of my friends (otherwise intelligent, educated women in their 30s! FOR REALS!) is a fan. I got through chapter 1 fueled by a mixture of white wine, disbelief, and red red rage that I will probably never be a published author but this Mormon lunatic is a multi-millionaire.

So thank you for reading it, thus ensuring that I don’t have to. 🙂

**

Incidentally, I’m sure you must have read Stephen King’s “On Writing” by now…. if you haven’t though, I strongly urge you to pick up a copy. Part memoir, part writing workshop, it’s a fascinating look at how he creates – and actually includes honest-to-god writing assignments that will get the juices flowing.

What Hannah said.
I LOVED this post. Haven’t read Twilight, and haven’t wanted to but AT ALL, but this post makes me want to be in on the jokes about it. Still, I don’t think I’ll ever get around to it. Thank you for summing it up so nicely.

I read Twilight for much the same reason you did: I knew it sucked but had to KNOW know. Unlike you, I had actually seen the movie first. It was one of those situations where your girlfriends say “Hey! Let’s go see a movie! Girls’ Night! No kids!” And you say “Absolutely! Awesome! What’s playing?” And they say “We’re going to see Twilight!” And you think “Really? Ugh. But, welllll… At least I’m getting out of the house for a couple of hours and getting to see a movie in the theatre for the first time in a year…. So okay.”

I *literally* 😉 laughed out loud in a few parts. No one else did, mind you — these weren’t meant to be humorous scenes. But when Edward told Bella she was “like my own personal brand of heroin”, I lost it. There were tears coming out of my eyes and I feared I’d have to run to the restroom. Sooooo cheesy!

I just did not get the phenomenon that was Twilight, clearly.

So, then we happened to be home visiting and Meg happened to have the books and happened to love them and I happened to be bored with nothing to read. So, morbid curiosity made me do it.

But I have to admit I went on to read the entire series.

Yes, they are trashy. But they’re kinda trashtacular. I know you’ll never read the sequels, so take my word for it that they DO get marginally better (and then worse again, if you’d believe it, but I digress…) and some of the questions you had DO get answered, like why Bella’s mind is impenetrable to Edward.

But are they WORTH reading? Not really. It was mindless entertainment. I have no desire to read them again, and certainly none to own them. I worry that they are, indeed, creating monsters out of teenage girls and the way they look at love. I’m appalled and amused by how obsessed many ADULT women are by them. I’m not pleased with how they’ve lamed up one of the coolest monsters for all time. (Sparkling in the sun instead of a torturous death? Really?)

I saw the first movie too at a girl’s night, but I wasn’t the only one laughing. My favorite disappointing part was when the “badass” vampires crash their baseball game, and I’m like, “Aw yeah, here we go, vampire fight! Woo!” (rubbing my hands together gleefully) and they proceed to NOT fight, but after some banter they politely try to join in on the baseball game. And I’m like, WTF.

Oh, my god! YES!!!! I so didn’t get the baseball game. I was like WTF? Really?? And giggling madly at the same time. After reading the books, I see that this was sort of the Quidditch equivalent of Twilight… but, well, lame.

I’m sending everyone I know a link to this (Twihards and Twibashers a like) because it sums up my feelings about the book exactly! I absolutely abhor the books (but have read them all), mainly because it took all of about two seconds and my best friend lent me all the books (she was hoping to convert me) and I have to admit 4 is so weird its quite interesting. What annoys me the most is that this has become such a phenomenon so much so that teenage girls are out there reading and believing this drivel and wanting their lives to be just like that. No, just no!

What Natalie said. Sometimes I love me some mindless garbage. But – if you thought the books were bad, watch the movies. I went with a friend and we laughed out loud because the acting was so horrible. You can’t take a shitty plot-line and add bad acting and expect the movie to be good. Yet – I’ve seen all the movies thus far and you bet I’ll see the final 2. It’s like I want to punish myself 🙂

I downloaded Twilight as an audiobook, way back when. A friend of mine had read it, and told me that “Since you like Harry Potter, you will definitely like this, too”. She told me she loved it.

So I started listening to it with an open mind, waiting for the moment I would be caught up in the story, waiting for the moment the story would begin, waiting for Bella to stop whining, waiting for the book to END.

I think my friend is certifiably insane. And I think you are awesome. And spot-on.

Oh, man, that hurts to hear. Harry Potter is extraordinary literature, while Twilight is garbage. It drives me crazy when people think that Harry Potter is popular because of the magic/wizards. There are TONS of books out there about magic/wizards – the entire fantasy section, to start – that are nowhere near as popular. So I don’t know why people think that is the key to Rowling’s success.

*sigh*

In that Stephen King quote, I only gave the second half. The full quote was “The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”

Rowling’s books are so rich on so many levels, and that in itself is an achievement. You can read them over and over again and discover something new every time — be it in the plot, or the language itself.

A random but related fact: I read the first few Potter books in the Dutch translation — I was 13 or so at the time — and only realized later on how well translated they were. For example, many of the names retained their multilayered meanings, which is terribly impressive. Writers like Rowling deserve and require translators who are able to do this. Writers like Meyer can only gain from someone who strays from their original text/meaning when writing a translation.

That’s good to know about the translation. PH and I are slowly collecting a copy of each Harry Potter book, each in a different language. We have Philosopher’s Stone in Latin, Azkaban in Spanish, Goblet of Fire in Portuguese, Half Blood Prince in German… and I can’t remember if we have Phoenix yet. Hmm. Oh, wait, maybe that’s the one we have in Japanese. Or do we have Chamber of Secrets in Japanese? Not sure. Can’t read Japanese…

That is so cool! PM me on dooce with your address and I’ll get you the Chamber in Dutch. Unless that’s the one you have in Japanese… Tell you what, take a picture of it and send it to me, I have a Japanese colleague and he’ll figure out which it is. You’ll get the other one in Dutch 🙂

You HAVE to read the full series. You HAVE to waste your time reading the other three books so that you can NOT waste your time by writing further brilliant critiques. I LOVE Jane Eyre – I couldn’t even begin to compare the two.

They just get worse. And the ending? Oh, dear Jesus in Heaven, the ENDING is the most horrid excuse for an ending in the history of barely excusable endings. Each book is made the length that it is merely by repetition. Book 1: Let’s kiss, no you should fear me, but let’s kiss, but no I’m bad, but I want you, but I shouldn’t take you…OVER AND OVER.
Out of all the crappiness, Book 2 was the lesser of the evils and I was definitely on Team Jacob, so I’m wondering if you would be, too.

Oh, and by Book 4 you know why Edward can’t read her mind. I mean, at least Steph TRIED to do something right and leave a little mystery for later.

But the END. Oy. I compare it often to Harry Potter and how both series try to have a battle of good vs. evil, but Harry Potter does it infinitely better. I’d go into more detail, but I don’t want to ruin the awfulness for you.

Especially since there seems to be very little evil, at least in the first book. Even the undead demons who thirst for Bella’s blood where blue jeans and spend so much time grand standing that it’s easy to catch and destroy them.

Great review! I read these books a few years ago and felt very much the same as you, and still do. Ahhh yes, let’s pretty up abusive relationships, pedophilia, necrophilia, and teenage pregnancies for teenage audiences world wide. I forced myself through all four books in the misguided hope that Meyers would have at least become a better writer by, say, book 3. Nope, by then she’d just become a millionaire for propagating garbage. I’m actually shocked that anyone would compare this literary trash to epics like Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre!!!

Then they made a movie out of it. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. I watched the first one and laughed my ass off. Literally. LOL. I found something oddly hilarious about the ‘sparkly vampire’ bit.

As for the whole Bella-Mental-Block thing (which I also like to call a lack of higher mental functioning) that is oh so frustrating for Edward *gag*…well needless to say Meyer’s definitely lacks originality. Charlaine Harris also writes a suitably shallow series involving vampires and a heroine with super mental status (heh)…and I actually like that series when I need a good dose of fluff. But I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to teenage girls!

I’ve been very entertained by your posts about Twilight, Harry Potter, and the Meyer vs Rowling series. They’re all spot-on. The banner comics are also real genius. I’m very glad I never picked Twilight because just looking at its synopsis grossed me out. When one friend lent it to me so I could give it a chance, I put it down after looking at random pages. You summed it up better than I ever could. By the way, I’d want to comment on your attitude towards fanfiction in general. Yes, the world of fanfiction is full of atrocities and published writers don’t like it so much (with understandable reasons) but I need to point out that I’ve met many budding authors started their writing exercises from fanfiction, and they treated their works seriously. Not every fanfiction contains self-insert or Mary Sue. Like there are good and bad fictions, there are also good and bad fanfictions.

I agree that there is some good fan fiction out there, but Twilight does not read like that fan fiction! It reads like your standard living-out-fantasies-with-no-real-thought-to-plot-development schlock which is perfectly harmless when it is just fan fiction, but is atrocious in a published, original novel!